


Truth or ... ?

by Deifire



Series: Eerie Advent Calendar Challenge [9]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: F/F, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, Ten Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5388386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In their first year living together, Mary and Andrea host a New Year's Eve party for their chosen family: the kids of Eerie, all grown up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth or ... ?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Eerie Advent Calendar fic challenge.
> 
> Prompt: Family gathering.

_Nearly ten years later_  
_Mary and Andrea's house_  
_New Year's Day_  
_Really, really early in the morning_

One of the joys of inheriting her aunt’s big house, Mary C. Carter had always thought, was getting to throw big parties. In their first year living together, she and Andrea had hosted the Fantuccis for Thanksgiving and had Christmas with what remained of the extended Carter family who could make it to Indiana.

New Year’s Eve, however, was for chosen family, and so she and Andrea had invited all those high school and college friends who counted, as well as all the newer friends who were starting to fill that role and partied until well past midnight.

The party wound down some time ago, and everyone had left, except for those who were too drunk or too tired to make it home under their own power and who had decided that crashing in Mary’s big and rumored-to-be-haunted house was preferable to catching a cab.

Seven people were still in the living room, not quite ready to sleep, not quite awake enough to do much else, trying to decide what to do next. 

Simon Holmes was lying on the floor on his stomach, clutching a sofa pillow and the remains of one last beer he’d been nursing for the past half hour. 

Dash X was sitting up, leaning against the sofa itself, while Marshall Teller lay on the floor on his back with his head in Dash’s lap. 

Tod McNulty had collapsed in a nest of throw pillows with his girlfriend, Donna, a woman with spiky red hair who played bass in Tod’s band and wore too much eyeliner and more black than Tod or even Dash, but who nevertheless was one of the most cheerful people Mary had ever met. Mary had liked her almost from the moment Tod had first bought her to meet the group over a year ago, especially when Donna seemed to find it as funny as everybody else that she was now one half of a couple sharing a name with the worst long-running soap opera on television.

Mary herself was curled up with Andrea in Andrea’s giant bright orange beanbag chair. It was one of the few pieces of furniture Andrea had insisted on bringing with her when she moved in, and it clashed horribly with the otherwise antique décor of the living room. Mary loved it.

“We could play Never Have I Ever,” suggested Andrea.

“Is that the game where somebody mentions something they haven’t done and everybody who _has_ done it has to take a drink?” asked Donna.

“Yes, and let’s not,” said Mary. “You know if we do, Auntie Mary’s only going to want to play.”

There was the sound of ghostly laughter from a corner of the living room. Ever since they’d figured out how to give the ghosts of Mary B. Carter and Tripp McConnell access to the Carter house, Mary had been coping with the problem of her great aunt wanting to join in on certain party games. 

It wasn’t that Auntie Mary was a bad sport at Never Have I Ever or anything, it was just that after six marriages, it turned out Auntie Mary had done quite a lot, and there were some just some things the younger Mary had decided people weren’t meant to know about their own deceased relatives. Plus, the whole being dead thing meant Auntie Mary was also immune to the effects of alcohol, which struck her great niece as being just the slightest bit unfair. Finally, there was the fact that, despite having died at a much more advanced age, Auntie Mary still spent most of the time manifesting in her favorite form, a thirteen-year-old girl in a pink dress, which just added an extra layer of creepiness to the whole thing.

“Okay, that’s a good point against,” Andrea agreed.

“Plus, Simon’s mean,” Marshall said. 

“I am not,” said Simon. “It’s not my fault I happen to possess certain knowledge which I can use to my advantage in this game.”

“He’s mean,” Andrea said. Then to Donna, who looked confused, “He always winds up making Mars and Dash drink on these weird and oddly specific statements that make those of us whose sex lives have taken place mostly on this planet and this plane of existence feel boring and inexperienced.”

“I…see?” said Donna, who hadn’t grown up in Eerie with the rest of them, and probably didn’t.

“Never Have I Ever doesn’t have to be about sex,” Tod pointed out.

“But let’s face it, it’s _always_ about sex,” said Mary, snuggling closer to Andrea.

“It’s an unfair advantage,” Marshall was saying to Simon. “You were around for most of my epic teenage misadventures, but I only got to hear about most of yours secondhand.”

“It’s not my fault you went to college,” said Simon.

“I was around for some of those misadventures, Simon,” said Dash. “Remember the phone call that started, ‘Dash, I need you to come quick, bring a lock pick, some table salt, and the book of banishment rituals on my desk, and don’t ask questions’?”

“Ooh, I hadn’t heard that one yet,” said Mary, as Simon blushed the way only an inebriated redhead can, and buried his face in the sofa cushion.

“You charged me fifty bucks for that, too,” he said, his voice muffled by the cushion.

“Standard locksmith fee,” Dash said. He smiled down at Marshall, brushed Marshall’s hair out of his eyes, then added, “But I agree we should take a pass on Never Have I Ever. Mars here is way too drunk to play a drinking game.”

“I am not,” Marshall insisted. “I’m just lying here because the room is a little spinny, and I don’t want to stand up and risk falling off the planet.”

“See?” Dash said.

“Well, to be fair, that did almost happen to me once,” said Marshall.

“See?” Andrea said to Donna, who probably still didn’t.

“I warned you this would happen,” said Simon. “You were matching Dash drink for drink early in the evening. You’d think after all these years, you’d learn.”

“You and your super-mega-voodoo-weird, alien-or-whatever metabolism,” Marshall said. He took Dash’s hand in his, and their fingers intertwined as they grinned at each other.

Andrea hugged Mary tighter. “Out of all the couples we know in high school, did you image _they_ would still be together?” she asked.

“After the night they got us all kicked out of the Eerie Bus Terminal and Supper Club? Hell, no. Out of all the couples we knew in high school, did you imagine we would still be together?” Mary countered.

“Always,” Andrea said. They kissed as the conversation continued around them.

“Okay, so no Never Have I Ever,” Simon was saying when they finally broke it off. “What about Truth or Dare? There’s no mandatory drinking, and only the people specifically asked get to participate.”

“No,” said Tod. “Dares would involve moving. I’m too tired to move.”

“So don’t pick dare,” Andrea said. “Mary, it’s your house. You want to choose the first victim?”

“It’s _our_ house,” said Mary firmly. Then, “Okay, Mars. Truth or…considering you’re too drunk to even stand up, I guess, truth?” As Marshall started to object, she added, “I promise it isn’t about sex.”

“Okay, truth then,” said Marshall.

“Is there any truth to the rumor you guys have a lease on the old Baker building downtown?”

“Some,” Marshall said, grinning. “We’re actually scheduled to sign next week.”

“I knew it!” said Mary. “I still think it’s the craziest idea I’ve ever heard, but I’m still somehow glad it’s going forward.”

“So the Teller and Holmes detective agency is going to be a real thing?” asked Tod. “Or is it Teller, Holmes, and X now? Or Teller, Holmes, and whatever name is on your driver’s license I’m always forgetting?”

“Right now, we’re thinking about Teller, Holmes, and Associates. The plural’s incorrect, but it gives us room to expand in the future,” said Simon. “Dash doesn’t want his name on the sign unless it’s his real name.”

Dash cleared his throat. “I think it’s somebody else’s turn,” he said pointedly.

“Okay Tod,” Marshall said. “And Donna, since this concerns you, too. Truth or…truth? This is also not about sex. Exactly.”

“Um, truth?” said Tod. He looked at Donna, who looked nervous, but nodded.

“Has there been a change in your relationship status you want to share with the rest of us?”

Mary noted that the way Marshall phrased the question gave them an out. Instead, Tod looked at Donna and asked, “Should we?”

“Oh hell, why not?” Donna replied. “You’re all going to be invited to the wedding anyway. Yes, we’re engaged!”

There were congratulations all around, along with attempted toasts with empty and half-empty bottles, and awkward hugs made even more awkward by the fact that everybody was still too tired and/or drunk to really stand up, and attempted to accomplish hugging by rolling in each other’s general direction until they were close enough to attempt a sort of half-embrace.

“How did you know?” asked Tod at last.

“I’m a licensed private investigator in two states now,” Marshall said. “And you’ve been wearing the rings on chains around your necks all night, trying to hide them under your shirts.”

“We thought nobody would notice,” Tod said. “We wanted to wait to make the general announcement until we’d told our parents. But I’m glad we got to tell you guys first. “

“In that case, I’m glad I suggested this game,” said Simon. “And that my best friend is a perceptive drunk.”

“I’m not that drunk,” Marshall continued to insist.

“By the way, has anybody heard from Janet?” asked Tod. “We want to invite her, too, but I don’t have her contact info.”

“When I called to tell her about this, she was in the Arizona desert headed somewhere to do research on the book,” Mary said. Janet Donner was the only one who had truly moved on and moved away from Eerie, instead of just talking about it like the rest of them had. “I’m not sure she’s got a permanent forwarding address these days, but if you wait until morning, I can give you her phone number.”

“That would be great,” Tod said and yawned. It spread around the room like it was contagious, the way yawns do.

“I think I’m finally getting sleepy,” said Donna.

“Me too,” said Simon.

“Should we head to bed?” Mary asked Andrea.

“I think I’m good here,” Andrea replied.

“M’kay, I’m good too,” Mary said. She shifted in her girlfriend’s arms.

“Hey, we should get married,” said Andrea, when they were both comfortable.

“That’s not even legal in Indiana,” Mary replied.

“Someday,” she heard Marshall say, sleepily, in that matter-of-fact way she’d heard him state facts he couldn’t possibly know before. The sort of thing that, when he was confronted with it, would usually cause Mars or one of his closest associates to mutter something about temporal anomalies and the mall and change the subject. 

When she and Andrea turned to look at him, though, Marshall was sound asleep. Dash held a finger to his own lips in a classic shushing gesture.

“All right, someday then,” Mary told Andrea, as they settled back down.

“I’m holding you to that if I remember when we wake up,” Andrea said. “Should I take your name or do you want to take mine? Or should we hyphenate?”

Mary started to say that Mary C. Carter-Fantucci sounded like an awful lot of Cs for a single name, but she was asleep before she could get the words out.


End file.
